Viewpoint: Improving access to microtechnology—the Europractice Project
The successful transfer of new technology into the marketplace depends on the creation of a strong supply infrastructure and a shift from research orientation to standard quality controlled processes. Over the past six years, the Europractice Project, supported by the IST programme of the European Union, has been a major catalyst to this transition in Europe. Now entering its seventh year, the project can boast 5 Manufacturing Clusters supported by (12) Design Houses and (5) Competence Centres.
The objective of the project is to improve access by building a network of service suppliers who cover design, prototyping, manufacturing, testing or who can offer application specific expertise in particular technologies. Design rules are now in place for a large number of processes including surface and bulk silicon micromachining, plastic and magnetic materials, as well as quartz and thin film materials.
The project has created a website www.europractice.com to assist potential users of the service find the most appropriate project partner who can match their needs. There is no central office or customer support line so users are encouraged to make direct contact with the organisations providing the service. A brief profile of the partners in the project and their role is given below.
A major innovation, supported by the project, is the fabrication of multi-project wafers (MPW) at several of the manufacturing sites. The MPW concept allows significant cost savings to be made during the product development phase by sharing tooling and prototyping costs. In some instances, as many as 10 designs targeted at one process have been fabricated together using one set of mask tooling and one wafer fabrication batch (Tables 1–3).
| Cluster name | Partners | Technology focus |
|---|---|---|
| AMICUS | Bosch (Reutlingen) | Silicon surface micromachining |
| HL Planar (Dortmund) | Microstructured thin films | |
| Fraunhofer ISIT (Itzehoe) | Consulting and design support | |
| MEMSOI | Tronics (Grenoble) | Surface and bulk micromachining on SOI production |
| CEA Leti, Yole | Consultancy and design support | |
| LAAS (Toulouse) | ||
| ACREO (Stockholm) | ||
| AML (UK) | ||
| CNM (Barcelona) | ||
| ISIT (Itzehoe) | ||
| NMRC (Cork) | ||
| Sintef (Oslo) | ||
| MultiMEMS | SensoNor (Oslo) | Bulk silicon micromachining |
| Sintef (Oslo) | Packaging and testing | |
| HVE (Oslo) | Prototyping and design support | |
| Microcomponent (Oslo) | ||
| CEMEMS | Colibrys (Neuchatel) | Bulk micromachining of quartz and silicon |
| Coventor (France) | Custom design of microsensors, actuators and microsystems | |
| Wicht (Germany) | ||
| Helbling and Meltler–Toledo (Switzerland) | ||
| MAGSYS | Sensitec (Wetzlar) | Thin film magnetic materials for AMR and GMR |
| Paragon (Germany) | ||
| AMIC (Berlin) | ||
| VVP (Latvia) | ||
| FACILE | QinetiQ (UK) | Integrated microsystems on silicon |
| Coventor (Netherlands) | ||
| ESM (UK) |
| Cluster name | Partners | Technology focus |
|---|---|---|
| MST Systems | ETB (Welwyn) | Non-silicon based MST |
| Accentus (UK) |
| Cluster name | Partners | Technology focus |
|---|---|---|
| CC Micro | RAL (Oxford) | Microactuators and non-silicon based MST |
| Fraunhofer ISIT (Itzhoe) | ||
| Sintef (Oslo) | ||
| MOEMS | CEA-Leti (Grenoble) | Optical MEMS |
| IMM (Mainz) | ||
| Sintef (Oslo) | ||
| Electron Technology Institute (Poland) | ||
| ARCF (Bulgaria) | ||
| SSSA (Pisa) | ||
| CSEM (Neuchatel) | ||
| MICROMEDICS | Fraunhofer IBMT (St. Ingbert) | Biomedical devices |
| Zarlink (Germany) | ||
| D&T (Barcelona) | ||
| LICOM | HSG-IMIT (Germany) | Liquid handling |
| Cranfield University (UK) | ||
| POLYMICRO | FZK (Karlsruhe) | Polymer optics |
| Heptagon (Finland) | ||
| Epigem (UK) | ||
| Daren (Israel) | ||
| SGT (Germany) |
J. Malcolm Wilkinson
Technology for Industry Ltd., E-Space North, Cambridgeshire, UK
| This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2002 |